ANA grounded all B787 Dreamliner planes

Emergency for B787 Dreamliner may be a disaster for Boeing

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Jan 16, 2013

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Paul Lewis, spokesperson of Boeing in Seattle told eTN: We're working with our client ANA Airlines and regulatory s authority to assist in this issue. We don’t have any more details to share at this point.”

Boeing has no further comments and referred eTN to ANA.

Media relations for ANA did not answer phone calls, and reservation phone numbers were unable to handle calls to rebook clients stranded by ANA's suspension of all Dreamliner Boeing 787 services by the Japanese carrier.

An All Nippon 787 made an emergency landing in Japan today because of smoke coming from the aircraft, prompting the decision to ground its entire fleet for the first time, said Ryosei Nomura, a spokesman for Tokyo-based All Nippon. Japan Air will also idle its fleet today. The carriers didn’t say for how long the planes will be grounded.
Today’s All Nippon flight left at 8 a.m. local time from Ube airport in Yamaguchi prefecture, southern Japan, bound for Tokyo’s Haneda airport, Nomura said. The Takamatsu airport is also in southern Japan, in Kagawa prefecture.

A strange odor was detected on the cockpit, forcing the pilot to evacuate the passengers through a chute after the emergency landing, All Nippon Vice President Osamu Shinobe said at a press conference in Tokyo. One passenger was taken to hospital because of wrist pain.

After the emergency landing, pilots asked the control tower to confirm smoke they’d seen from the cockpit, said Yuzuru Ogasawara, chief of the transport ministry’s Takamatsu airport bureau.

“We have received reports from the control tower that they confirmed the smoke, and I have seen that passengers evacuated from the escape chute into the airport,” he said. “We have not confirmed if anyone on board was injured.”

Japan’s public broadcaster NHK reported that all 129 passengers and eight crew members were safely evacuated.

Japan-based All Nippon Airlines (ANA) recently expanded its route network with its first arrival into Silicon Valley’s own Mineta San Jose International Airport (SJC) on Friday January 11, 2013. Dreamliner service to Seattle was also recently launched.

The Oct. 26 inaugural flight on launch customer All Nippon Airways (ANA) left Tokyo to much fanfare, a special round-trip ANA charter flight to Hong Kong to mark the 787's entrance into regularly scheduled passenger service.

The emergency landing, which the carrier said it will probe, comes a week after the lithium-ion battery in a Japan Airlines 787 caught fire on Jan. 7 in Boston. That incident prompted a review by U.S. regulators of the design and manufacturing of the Dreamliner, Boeing’s most technologically-advanced jet, and the first to use lithium-ion batteries and to have a composite- plastic body.

“This is not good,” said Andrew Orchard, a Hong Kong- based analyst at CIMB Securities HK Ltd. “There could be some sort of softness in demand in the short term, but I don’t think the incidents will have a huge impact on demand in the long term.”

All Nippon was the first customer for the plane, which entered service in late 2011. The 787 has been plagued by incidents since then, including fuel leaks and faulty parts, most of which have been typical for a new model’s first year or two and none of which have caused injuries.

The airport’s runways have been shut following the incident, said Yorimasa Tojo, a spokesman at the transport ministry’s Takamatsu airport bureau. “The runways will remain closed until we at least move the plane,” he said. All passengers have safely evacuated into the airport building, he said.

Shares of GS Yuasa Corp. (6674), which makes the lithium ion batteries for the 787, tumbled as much as 4.8 percent, the most since Oct. 23, in Tokyo trading.

The battery maker hasn’t heard of any change in production plan of the 787, spokesman Tsutomu Nishijima said today. A spokesman at Toray Inc., which makes the carbon-fiber for the plane’s body, couldn’t be reached for comments. Hideo Ikuno, a spokesman for Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd., which produces wing boxes for the 787s, said the company’s delivery of parts depends on Boeing’s schedule.

This is a crucial year for the 787 as Chicago-based Boeing increases deliveries, trying to get out from under the weight of seven delays to the jet’s introduction that spanned more than three years. Boeing is set to double 787 production this year to help fill remaining orders for about 800.